Equivalence of space and time-bins in DPS-QKD

Gautam Shaw, Shyam Sridharan, Shashank Ranu, Foram Shingala, Prabha Mandayam, Anil Prabhakar

Published 2020-08-07Version 1

We set up differential phase shift quantum key distribution (DPS-QKD), over 105 km of single-mode optical fiber, with a quantum bit error rate of less than 15% at a secure key rate of 2 kbps. The testbed was first used to investigate the effect of excess bias voltage and hold-off time on the temporal distribution of photons within a gate window of an InGaAs single-photon detector (SPD) and quantified the effects of afterpulsing. The key generation efficiency, and security, in DPS-QKDimprove with an increase in the number of path delays or time-bin superpositions. We finally demonstrate the implementation of superposition states using a time-bin approach, and establish equivalence with the path-based superposition approach, thus yielding a simpler approach to implementing superposition states for use in DPS-QKD.